Author
- K Julian1
- Middlemore Hospital1
2018
Excerpt
Introduction: There are around 12,000 adult deaths in intensive care units (ICU) a year in Australasia. This number is likely to rise as increasingly complex health problems are managed in the highly medicalised intensive care environment. This environment is often completely foreign to the bereaved and those supporting them in their bereavement.
Objectives: Using a fictionalised case study, intensive care clinicians will talk through the care of a patient from admission and initial discussions with family to end of life decision making and management of death.
Approach: The intensive care environment is often a place of overwhelming complexity and uncertainty for families. This case study will be informed by feedback from bereaved families to the bereavement follow up team at a New Zealand intensive care unit.
Practice implications: Psychological distress in the next of kin of those who die in ICU is common.
Conclusions: An understanding of common events and themes during critical illness may enable the bereaved to be supported in their grief and quest for understanding.
Objectives: Using a fictionalised case study, intensive care clinicians will talk through the care of a patient from admission and initial discussions with family to end of life decision making and management of death.
Approach: The intensive care environment is often a place of overwhelming complexity and uncertainty for families. This case study will be informed by feedback from bereaved families to the bereavement follow up team at a New Zealand intensive care unit.
Practice implications: Psychological distress in the next of kin of those who die in ICU is common.
Conclusions: An understanding of common events and themes during critical illness may enable the bereaved to be supported in their grief and quest for understanding.